


selene and cereus

by jazzfic



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Light Angst, Meet-Cute, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29508486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: There’s a new hologram in the matrix, that hologram has an owner, and Cris has a problem. It’s a problem he doesn’t want solving.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios, Emil | La Sirena's Emergency Medical Hologram & Cristóbal Rios
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Star Trek Rom Com





	1. is there a doctor in the house?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to lovely pals in the Picard fandom for encouragement and laughs, and for being willing research subjects in dealing with bipeds in a three dimensional plane (or, to put it another way, plonking two fictional characters onto a spaceship and saying ‘now kiss’).

It began with a fault in the system, what an understanding soul with a taste for the dramatic might call the universe colliding, somewhere far off and in another life. 

It began, here, in this one, with a cup of coffee. 

Cris was standing in the mess, wondering at what point the carefully programmed version of said drink he was mainlining had turned into tasteless sludge – and did that mean his tastebuds were fizzing out or did the replicator just need a thump – when all of the ship’s lights dipped at once. He jerked in surprise and his thumb caught the handle of the mug, jettisoning hot liquid over his hands and down the front of his pants. 

“Ah, shit... Computer, status!” he barked, patting ineffectively at his groin.

_“All systems functioning normally, Captain Rios.”_

He turned for the stairs and had one hand on the railing when he heard the familiar ping of a hologram blinking into existence. “It’s okay, it’s only coffee,” he said, not really looking to see which of them it was. 

“Please describe the medical emergency.”

He spun back. That was not the voice of the EMH. 

It was also very much not the EMH in any way, shape or form.

The hologram’s pattern resembled a human female, small and dressed plainly in a white lab coat and camel coloured pants. Blonde hair fell in waves to her chin, framing a round face with large eyes set closely above a dipped-up nose. Her feet were turned slightly inwards and her fingers laced loosely together, giving a contradictory air of capable, if somewhat worried readiness. 

Ignoring the gaping stare Cris was currently working his way out of, she immediately zoned in on his hands. “There’s no burn, you’re lucky. But perhaps you should consider installing some isoprene polymer or other stability enhancing material underfoot at this little replicator arrangement you have here, in case you feel like careening about the place again with a too full beverage.” She then smiled widely, as if seeing him for the first time. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He darted his eyes past her. “Computer, activate EMH!”

Instantly the hologram flashed away, reappearing by one of the tables. “Please describe the medical emergency.”

“Okay...” Cris took a breath and walked over. This was maybe going to take some tactical resolution that involved less shouting. “Where’d you come from? Where’s Emil?” 

“Is that the one who shares your features? Manages to somehow look both mildly frumpled and incredibly dashing? I believe we waved at each other through the data stream just now. A strange sensation; I feel a bit disjointed, actually.” She shuddered minutely and turned away from him. “What do you call this ship? It’s very small.”

He circled her carefully, trying and failing to put himself in her line of sight as she gazed about the room. “ _What_ data stream?”

Before she could answer the air flashed around them, heralding imminent company and a headache he didn’t need. Cris huffed quietly as the quota of holograms in the room increased by a factor of too many. Something had obviously pinged its way into the annoying pigeon-brained communication system they all seemed to share. He was shocked it had taken them this long, really. 

The not-Emil EMH smiled widely as four pairs of very surprised eyes immediately focused on her. Emmet, too, had perked up and even foregone his usual vertical slouch, Cris noted, annoyed as if this was some sort of betrayal to the brotherhood. 

But he was outnumbered, and technically this was company of a sort. So he stepped back and waited for the round of tedious introductions to run its course. 

“Hello,” said Enoch.

“Hello,” said the new hologram.

“Hello,” said Ian.

“Hello,” said the new hologram.

“Hello,” said Steward.

“Hello,” said the new hologram.

 _“Hola, señora,”_ said Emmet.

 _“Hola,”_ said the new hologram.

An excruciating pause, then:

“Lovely to meet you. I’m Enoch,” said Enoch. 

“Lovely to meet you, Enoch,” said the new hologram.

“Lovely to meet--” began Ian, at which point Cris couldn’t take it any more and jumped in. 

“Okay, we’re all friends! Wonderful.” He snapped his fingers by the white lab coat and gestured to the upper floor. “You, come with me, now, please. We’re calling home... wherever that is.” 

Enoch, meanwhile, had finally clocked onto the fact that something was missing. He turned around, eyes flashing silver. “Wait a minute. Emil isn’t here!”

“He’s fast, isn’t he?” Steward gave a nervous chuckle, mostly in the direction of their new friend, slinking back a touch when Cris stared phasers at him.

There was a loud chiming from the bridge. The EMH raised her pale eyebrows at this well-timed interruption. “I think that’s for you.”

Cris took two seconds to thank the stars for getting him out of that particular circle of hell before hauling himself up the stairs. While his own EHs began unpacking this new development in hushed squeaks, the new hologram zipped away and reappeared with a smile beside the captain’s chair. He glanced at her warily as he sat and waited for the comm to sound again. “I don’t have time for this, you know that, right?”

She regarded him with interest. “Bless your heart. You really don’t like meeting new people, do you?”

“Define _people,_ ” he said under his breath, and with a flick of his wrist he threw the hail on screen. 

A woman, standing in some sort of lab, was leaning towards the viewer with a worried expression. Blonde, small, her face the mirror image of--

Cris sighed. “Oh, that’s just great...”

And there was Emil. Looking not at all concerned at being somewhere else for the first time in – well, ever. Cris felt a flutter of relief in his chest, followed immediately by a more guilty one; he rearranged his features to that of casualness, as if this sort of thing happened every day. 

“What are you doing with my hologram?” the woman demanded. 

Cris angled himself on the armrest. “What are you doing with _my_ hologram?” he replied cooly. That was good – get a wall up right away. Be calm and unfazed. Nothing to see here.

“I asked first.”

Except he’d built that damn wall with cruddy cheap mortar. “Well, do you think I know?” He took a breath and tried again. “Okay, okay. Let’s wind back some. Who am I speaking to?”

Immediately the aggravated tone disappeared. She smiled, her whole face brightening. It was as if somebody had turned on a switch, and he realised in the same half-second in which the automatic response set kicked in and he began to smile back, how he’d been staring this whole time at the button scoop of her nose, and it was so weirdly captivating that he had to force his face back into a nonchalant expression. 

“Oh. Dr Agnes Jurati. Hi.”

“Hello. Cris--”

“Rios, yes. Your EMH gave me this ID. Uh, you’re the captain, right?”

“La Sirena.” 

He made sure to really roll the _r_ there. It somehow seemed very important. For some reason.

“Great. That’s great. Are you a... fan of the sea?” Her face crumpled awkwardly. 

Emil’s head popped into view. “As delightful as this banter is you both appear to have forgotten the reason for this call.” He gestured at himself and then at Cris. Or, rather, at Cris’s shoulder. The new hologram waved back. 

This was getting ridiculous. “Something’s swapped our holograms,” he said, massaging the bridge of his nose. 

“Yes, and I want to know what you did to cause it. Because I can’t--”

“What I did?” Cris looked up and jabbed a finger at the screen. “Look, Doctor, I don’t know what you’re doing or where the hell you’re calling from--”

“Daystrom.”

“--but if you think I purposefully... I’m sorry? Did you say Daystrom?”

“Yes. Don’t you read your own scans?”

“’Course I do.” He hadn’t. “But, listen – I cannot be on a hookup with Daystrom. Not on this ship. By the time I get to the end of this sentence I’m gonna be flagged by your security, and that’s a breath away from Starfleet security, which is a kiss I _really_ don’t want right now. Lovely as she is, I need this hologram gone. I can’t get her gone. I need my EMH back. I can’t get him back. You see the problem we have?”

Agnes flushed. Cris cleared his throat. Part of that had slipped out before he’d had time to filter it. “I – sorry. I maybe phrased that... wrong.”

“Can I beam over?” she asked, in a quieter voice.

He could feel Emil’s eyes burrowing small, all-knowing holes through the viewer, and wondered if the option to cut comms and very discreetly scoot off to warp was still on the table. As far as Cris was concerned it was either that or magic a way to reach through subspace and haul the doctor back by his starched white collar so he could be passively-aggressively tutted at in the privacy of his own ship. 

Or he could just stick to polite co-operation, like a normal person. 

“Sending you the co-ordinates.” Cris tapped the screen. 

The image blinked away. He released a breath and gripped the armrest. 

“Are you feeling okay, Captain Rios? You’re displaying elevated levels of--”

Cris jumped. He’d forgotten the other one was still there. “God damn it...” He stood up and gave her a look as he made his way to the transporter pad. “Don’t get too comfortable here, okay? This is not your ship.”

–

He’d maybe not clocked it before, distracted by the short barrage of the back-and-forth-and-getting-nowhere tilt their conversation had taken, but as the cascade of particles reassembled themselves it was obvious that his new visitor really did not want to be here.

“Not a fan of transporters?” asked Cris.

Agnes Jurati took a step off the pad, orienting herself. She looked over and smiled wanly, waving the question away.

“No, no, it’s space that gets me. I’m, uh, pretty land-locked most of the time.” 

_No kidding_ , he thought. It wasn’t like this was a new thing he’d ever dealt with. He’d had years now of ferrying clients about whose level of space-readiness ranged from ground-dwellers who barely set foot outside of the stratosphere, to others who seemingly lived a life in the black, racing from one meteor shower to another. This Dr Jurati, in her long coat and flat shoes with soles scuffed only by the floor of an Earth laboratory, was definitely in the former camp. No failing stabilisers had ever sent _her_ cartwheeling across a heavily leaning bridge as a screaming hull threatened to fall apart. (Though to be fair, that sort of thing wasn’t exactly Cris’s day to day existence, either. That was kind of a worst case example, one where he’d come the closest he’d ever been to declaring real and actual love for his little freighter, once they’d finally managed to skip away to calmer waters, much to the amusement of Emmet. But, still. Different worlds.)

He gave her a moment to gather herself, but realised too late that this was a mistake, when the hospitality hologram, as if sensing an awkward silence in which to outlay his services, took the nanosecond opportunity to pop out of the air and into solid form.

Cris cradled his forehead. _“Mierda...”_

“Welcome to La Sirena!”

She jerked back. “Oh! Wow, okay, so you definitely chose the self-scan option.” A smile flashed beneath the shining dark moustache as the hologram bowed, launching into a cascade of verbosity he’d obviously been saving for a special guest, so rare were they on this vessel et cetera, et cetera. Cris didn’t know what was worse – this alone, or the realisation that the situation and some rusted on politeness meant that the hologram knew, to an almost gleeful degree, that a) he wasn’t going to be turned off in the next five seconds, and b) he was going to take advantage of every moment.

“What an utter pleasure it is to have a new face on board. We are forever pressing our dear captain that he really needs to get out into the welcoming arms of _real_ people more often, rather than spend his days ensconced in the monochrome world you see around you, his only friends mere fractals of light...”

 _You smug, knowing bastard_ , Cris thought, watching the doctor stick her hand out and the EHH practically fall onto it. 

“Thank you,” she said, immediately enchanted, and then to Cris as an aside, “I just love the hospitality presets. I hardly ever get to work with them. This is so charming.”

“It’s really not. _Please_ don’t encourage him.” With some desperation he looked around until he spotted the other hologram. She was still standing beside the captain’s chair, and had moved on to examining the interface he’d left up with an intense fascination. Cris cleared his throat as the handshaking ceremony continued interminably and waved in the direction of the bridge. “Look, there’s your stray. Can we get on with sorting this mess out?”

Agnes nodded. He caught Steward giving him a look that all but said _now then, play nice_. By way of a response Cris gestured politely and waited for his guest to lead the way, before he followed, turning once to walk three steps backwards, his path best hidden to deliver a swift, silent message with the finger of one hand.

–

“Hello, Dr Jurati.”

“Hello, Doctor. Have you been having fun?” Agnes circled her charge and looked the hologram up and down. She smiled warmly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home in a jiffy.”

Cris sat and pulled the controls up. “How?” he asked, trying not to sound impatient. “It’s like the whole things’s blocked, I can’t--”

She leant across him and scanned the interface for all of three seconds before she began tapping in commands with quick fingers, muttering under her breath. “Oh, this is easy, no wonder I couldn’t... from my lab...” Cris held himself as still as possible, not wanting to interrupt while at the same time slightly distracted by the fact that the shampoo she used smelled like ginger, and that she had the tiniest pale freckle on her neck, below-- 

“...and if I just – there!” 

Agnes hopped back, the air crackled briefly, and suddenly Emil was before them, in the exact spot where the other hologram had been standing. She gave a short laugh. “Okay! Well, I’m glad that worked. Otherwise we might’ve been left searching the quadrant for him.” Off the look Cris gave her, she spoke quickly, “You see, this ship is optimised for holo-integration, but it’s kind of old in other areas and it’s susceptible to interference. So the math I had to do was a little... homespun. It’s like my dad, how he used to tinker with these crappy shuttles on the weekends cramming too-powerful tech inside and then wonder why they ended up wheezing back to earth shearing bits of hull left and centre. Not that he was ever actually in the pilot’s seat, you know. He was mostly a lab jockey, like me. Dreaming big. Well, apart from that one time... and, well, I suppose one time’s all it took...” 

“Doctor--”

She looked at him, the smile falling away. Before he could continue she blinked and gestured to the EMH – his EMH. “Well, there you are, lost pup returned to the pack. I’ll just...” Agnes looked from the hologram to Cris, hesitating for a beat before setting off at speed towards the transporter pad. She called out over her shoulder. “I don’t think it will happen again, but if it does, I’ve programmed a reset in your controls.”

Her words were tumbling out all in a rush now. Cris shared a look with Emil, jumped up from his chair and trailed after her. “Okay,” he said. “Hang on, though, don’t you want to...”

He didn’t really know what he was going to ask. It was like something was snapping the covers of a book shut just as he was feeling a spark of interest in the story. So he said nothing, stopped at the controls and keyed in the code.

Agnes stood on the pad. She was jiggling slightly on the balls of her feet. “I’d better go,” she said, gazing at a point past his shoulder. “It was nice to meet you, Captain Rios. Pity the circumstances, I guess.”

“Right. Thanks, uh, for helping.”

 _Thanks for helping?_ That was all he could come up with? What about _how about explaining what in the hell actually happened there because it seems like kind of a big deal..._ forgetting, conveniently enough, how he’d deplored about not having any time for this. Cris let out a breath instead and pushed the transport. She gave a little wave with one hand as she disappeared.

–

He thought that would be the end of it. Put it down to just another strange encounter, ignore the dozen or so questions which were hanging around with no answer, and scuttle off, just a lonely guy in his monochrome world, to misquote his master of ceremonies, touch starved and with baggage intact, dragging forever in his wake.

Except barely twenty-four hours later, Emil was zipped away a second time. He’d been in the full throes of a particularly peeved off series of grievances, mostly directed at Cris for not returning a dermal regenerator he’d borrowed to fix a tear in his shirt, when mid-sentence he promptly blinked into nothing, and--

“--really, Captain Rios, organisation of one’s inventory should be more of a priority,” finished the female EMH with a smile. 

A loud sigh came from the door. “Oh, it’s happened again,” said Enoch, peering through.

Cris, sat in a slightly hunched manner at the med table having been taking his medicine in the form of a doctor-patient rant, bit back a choice phrase or two and peered tiredly at the Jurati hologram, somehow not at all surprised at this recalibration of events. From this angle the bright circular lights haloed her yellow hair, making her look otherworldly. 

“Yes, thank you, Navigator Obvious.” He wheeled the chair backwards to the nearest station, bringing up his executive controls to search for the patch. A few taps later there was a quick flash and Emil was deposited back into the room.

“Giddy aunt!” the doctor huffed into his beard. “This is most disconcerting.”

“Not a whole lot I can do about it,” said Cris, clapping him on the shoulder as he stood up.

He received a bemused look. “I’m sorry, but I think there is, Captain. Call her--”

“What does it matter, we’re gone in a few days. I’m sure this fault in the whatever will stop once we’re out of Earth orbit.” 

Cris climbed the stairs. He wasn’t doing it. The EMH could argue with the walls, he decided. 

He wasn’t calling her back.

–

The third time it happened, he ignored the increasing clamour at his back in various accents, went in his room and took a long drink. His brain seemed to like this bury in the sand approach to things, so at the fourth time he repeated it.

At the fifth he relented, pulled up her comm channel on the bridge and left a message.

“Hey, this is Cris Rios. So, I, uh, guess you know why I’m calling. Not that I’m not having a great time watching my CMO get whisked away in all sorts of hilarious open-mouthed scenarios, and not that I don’t like having your doctor tend to my cuts and bruises because it means I’m not staring at my own damn face for once, but the thing is, I’m leaving the neighbourhood soon. And I don’t want this string breaking when we’re too far apart to re-tie it. Though you’re the expert, so what do I know, maybe I’m overreacting. Anyway, um. Call me back. Or not. If you want. Okay.”

He stared at the stars, thoughts swimming, and felt Emmet’s eyes on him. “Don’t start,” he said.


	2. polishing the doorhandles

He got nothing. He had half expected it; she was busy, she had better things to be doing. He had no expectations and held nothing against her for that. But as Cris was stacking cargo into the storage compartments for their next under-the-radar haul (this time it was jelly crystals and blood wine gums in their literal thousands; the black market for rot-your-molars confectionary was a thing apparently and a lucrative one at that, going by the rate the vendor was willing to cut him in for), he heard a ping at the transporter pad, and when he’d scanned the signature he hit the panel so fast it left an indent on his thumb. 

So he’d fully reconciled her excuses, it seemed, and underestimated his own reaction entirely. 

She emerged from the transport beam with an expression he couldn’t read. Her eyes were clear, though, and the smile seemed real. 

“You need that looking at?” 

Agnes nodded at his hand. Cris shrugged, trying very hard not to smile back. Instead he said, rather dryly, “I got a doctor who likes to declare me bed-bound for a fortnight if I breathe out the wrong way. I think I can keep this knock to myself.”

“Then let’s get to work.” 

He made a vague gesture in the direction of the lower floor, ready to play confused host again. But she was already stepping off the pad and towards the stairs with a determined look on her face; not unlike, he thought, as if she knew the place already.

–

She spent the better part of the day on La Sirena. Cris tried making an excuse at leaving her to it but the look on her face somehow made him convince himself that he would miss something great and revelatory if he turned his back, so he sat instead at the round table in the med-lab, watching as she moved about and spoke to the computer in precise and deliberate intervals. She’d brought her hologram and was letting it wander about at the mercy of Steward and Enoch, who were more than happy to play roving entertainers. At one stage he thought he heard a trill of laughter from the bridge, followed by a deep chuckle that sounded suspiciously like Emmet telling a dirty joke. 

“I think my holograms are corrupting yours,” said Cris, after a particularly salacious rumble. 

Agnes smiled. “Oh, she’s not so innocent, that one.” She looked over, leaning on one elbow, “She’s modelled on somebody who’s done some not so great things in her time, but let’s keep that to ourselves, hey.” 

He made a pantomime show of note-taking and locking it away, then wandered into the mess. “Can I get you some food?”

“Um, sure.”

Cris pressed in his usual lunchtime preset. He then immediately deleted it and decided on a safer option, not knowing if she had the stomach for his particular, fire-soaked tastes. He set the trays on one of the tables and waved her over. When she met his eyes around the holo-interface he shrugged and said, “Mine doesn’t like things being eaten in the lab.”

She came over and sat down. “You’re going to have to tell me about that one. And the others.”

Cris let out a breath. He really needed to watch where he was steering this conversation, or she was going to get spooked and run away again. He tried for low-key teasing instead. “Do I have to?” 

Well, that was possibly bordering on flirting, judging by the way his voice dropped without him really thinking about it, but it was hard to really lean in over cold pasta salad. Not that she seemed to notice.

“No.” Agnes poked a fork at her bowl. “Except that was kind of a fast answer, so don’t think I haven’t logged it away somewhere in here, just so you know.” She tapped at her head jokingly with one finger and her eyes darted to his, then away again, scanning the room. “I gotta say, this is a little different to my park bench.”

“How so?” he asked.

“It’s... higher?”

Cris chuckled slightly. 

“At least you’re reminding me to eat,” she said. “I can be a bit scattered sometimes.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“It’s just, do you ever have that thing when you have an idea and you just can’t stop until you’ve seen it either to a moderately satisfying outcome, or a blazing disaster? Like... there’s no in between?”

He shrugged, taking a bite. “Sometimes? I guess it’s hard to tell. We’re not always the fairest or most unbiased judge of our own actions.”

“But you have a crew,” she said.

“If you can call them that.” 

“I mean... they’d let you know if you’re veering completely off course, right?”

“Eh, not always. I tend to switch them off. Kind of a lot, actually.”

Agnes stared at him. “Don’t you want them to be honest with you, though? I’ve been more or less stonewalled when it comes to synthetics so I’ve turned to holos, god help my research longing heart, but the rules are still strict. I mean, I can’t just leave them running around to mesh their programming organically and develop integrated, socially adept personalities. Not ‘in the wild’. This freighter, this whole... set up you have. You have _five_ of them. Do you realise how lucky you are? It’s like a dream project. If I lived here I’d never set foot off ship. Except for, you know, the whole space thing. It might take me a while to get used to that.” She shrugged, looking busily at her food. “But hey, bring out a few more lunch dates, and you’ll make a girl pretty happy.”

Cris peered at her carefully over the rim of his glass. “That last bit was... hypothetical, right?”

She made an affirmative noise and took an extra large bite, chewed fast and looked at him sideways. “Kind of?”

“Is that your way of asking me to ask you back here?”

“Well...”

She was on the verge of blushing now. It was actually more adorable than he could take with a straight face and he glanced away, giving her a moment, then smiled at the table and said, “Let’s see how far I get before I break your coding first. Then we’ll talk the good _cazuela_.”

Agnes laughed. “Okay.” 

They finished eating. He let her go, stacking the trays into the reclaimer. It was all talk anyway. She was trying to play off the situation she was in; he’d wanted to ask about the ban just as he suspected she’d wanted to prod a little further into why he was so dismissive about his holograms. Cris couldn’t bear the thought of subjecting her to that conversational path and all the joys contained there, though. That was a flashing light to turn back if ever he knew one, and the thing that was all but guaranteed to scare off pretty much every person who tried to get to know him past the first round of steaming _chech'tluths_. If he even reciprocated, that is, which was rare before, and these days, close to never.

And those who slipped through... well, that was even less of a number, and they tended to be long gone come morning, with realisation rising slowly amidst the cigar ends and mumbled apologies. 

Agnes hummed as she worked. He listened to the voices on the upper level, more jokes. His EHs, Cris thought, they had each other, surely they were as socially integrated – or whatever she’d labelled it – as he allowed them to be? Which on a normal day he would say was too damn much, if it involved him; and to the rest, well, he mostly didn’t care. Not in the way Agnes Jurati did.

“I hear you’re heading out soon. Got some hot cargo burning a hole on your deck?” she asked, her voice muffled a little behind the hand she held cupped to her cheek, tap tapping as she prodded the computer. Cris wondered if he should be demanding more of a clear cut explanation as to what she was actually poking at there. It could be anything. One meal and a few confusing conversations on the fly could hardly count as knowing her every motive. 

But he also wondered if trust was a thing they’d stumbled past already, held palm out in the first minute she’d beamed aboard, when she’d told him in a soft and open voice that she was scared of space. 

“Something like that,” he said. 

Agnes turned, round eyes thoughtful; she looked like she had something more to say but she angled away again, nose back to the code. After a while she resumed the little melody. 

–

The fix was done. They materialised away, Dr Jurati and her hologram. He studied the transporter panel as it flashed green, and then he ran a recheck just to make sure. He followed Emmet to the bridge, easing into his chair with a snap of his fingers, and he felt the hum beneath his feet as La Sirena dipped once, skimming the atmosphere before turning like a crying seabird over the curve of blue and blasting hard into warp. Cris bit on a cigar. He angled the lighter away and let the flame run a little too hot and a little too long. It felt like being on the edge of something. It was nice.

–

One hour, that was all he managed. One hour of sitting around staring at literal space while waiting for his contact to call in and secure the drop point, before curiosity got the better of him and he pulled her profile up. 

(If he was being honest with himself, and let’s face it, those times were mostly confined to when sleep had run off and left him with the small horrors of what reality looked like in the arse crack of night through the admittedly pretty starlight portal in his quarters – which, considering his poor to non-existent sleep schedule, was a time he was getting to know quite well – he might have called it something more than curious. It was more like an itch that was going to flare if and when he put a nail to it. 

And really? The _if_ in this case barely stood up. It was only a case of when.) 

_Dr Agnes P. Jurati, Division of Advanced Synthetic Research, Daystrom Institute_. It was the usual dull tripe polished for public consumption – degrees, accomplishments, the many papers contributed to and co-authored. (Many was an understatement; he scanned the first half-dozen long titles and felt his eyes begin to drift. She was crazy intelligent, beyond smart. And she’d called his ship a dream project? Surely the cosmic scales were on some weird, heavy bias there.) She was also younger than he’d pinned on her, though not by much, and he was relieved that his ability to get a read on new people hadn’t been entirely washed down the head. Once a first officer always a first officer, Cris mused, flicking through the screens and then clamping that thought down before it could lead to other things. Stick to the face bravely representing a dying stream of scholarly endeavour. It can’t have been fun, having a blanket ban put on everything you’d worked towards. No wonder she’d carved out a side project in holo-programming.

And no wonder she was brilliant at that, too. 

She was smiling in her staff picture, blandly, prettily. It wasn’t anything like the one that lit up her face when Steward had done his bended-on-one-knee performance, or the one that scrunched the tip of her nose when Emmet winked at her in a moment Cris had pretended not to see when she and her little hologram beamed away. He’d only just met her, if he could even call it that, but he felt like he could see the real Agnes in between the neat clothes and bare-boned outline of her hard work. His eyes kept flickering over to the page and it struck him how he wanted to fill in the gaps, listen to her, to ask--

“...Captain?”

There was a shrill chiming at the other end of his holo-interface. And there was Enoch, bent like a teapot by the ops station as if uncertain whether or not to sit, staring at Cris with brows raised and mouth moving. 

He blinked. “Huh?”

“It’s Mister Teuling. He’s been calling right under your nose there for the last twenty seconds at least. Honestly, Captain, you’re away with the fairies!”

Cris flicked the Daystrom page to one side. 

“You’re late, Nelis.” He frowned at the scowling face. “I don’t wait around for long, not in these parts.”

He sat back and ran a hand over his beard as the excuses rattled out at the other end of the comm. This guy was dodgy at worst but usually good on his word. Most of the time. Anyway, he was due for a cathartic argument or three.

Enoch shook his head and sat down. Cris listened to his contact ramble on about how much grief the Bolians were giving him over the price, as if that was Cris’s problem even in the slightest, and chose to selectively ignore the way the ENH’s knowing eyes stopped at the picture of Dr Jurati, a little portrait in reverse, tucked away among charts and scrolling texts in the corner of the captain’s screen.

–

Once the cargo was delivered and they were well out of shouting range from old Cornelis, Cris pulled the ship into one of the slower ferrying routes and had her sit anchor in her own shadow while he tended to some repairs. They were minor things, really. It was more that he was in a mood to take a day or so and make a few decisions on what they were going to do next. He had some plans drafted out but things weren’t urgent. It was one of those rare occasions when they had stores and latinum in (mostly moderate) surplus, meaning for once Cris had space to think. Or time to spend polishing the doorhandles, as Steward liked to call it. Usually he hated stopping, bobbing about headless on the currents, but he was feeling generous. So he let the holograms bustle about and see to the ship, and he sat back in the silence and let himself not worry about things, just for a while.

And not spend half the day thinking about a certain earth-bound scientist and what she was doing. 

It was never going to last. 

Things began to unravel when he realised they had started talking. And once he felt eyes scanning him and the weight of wondering glances, all notions of rest and recuperation flew right out the airlock. 

Now, as the murmurs floated across the deck, Cris planted a heel and turned his chair slowly. If he’d been in a more combative mood he might have made a show of it and let loose with his usual method of managing them when they got like this, which was to mouth obscenities the length of the ship and then lock them out of the matrix for the rest of the day. But he was actually making an effort not to react so flammably to everything, so the movement he made was in the fractions, just enough to catch sight of them over the edge of his book. 

There they were, gathered in a knot by the transporter pad, glaringly outlined in the bright lights of the engine. Even Emmet was among the conspirators, the one vaguely shining beacon who Cris thought was at least immune to stagey whispers. 

Was there a collective noun for a group of emergency holograms? 

A gossip. That’s what they were. A bloody unnecessary, unwanted gossip.

He went back to his book, and had inched his eyes along maybe three sentences without taking in a single word, before irritation got the better of him and he stood up. 

“ _¡Oye,_ you lot!”

The small huddle scattered with all the casualness of an exploding ants’ nest as Cris strode towards the back of the ship. 

“Ah, Captain,” said the EHH smoothly, “what a happy coincidence--”

“Do you honestly think you’re all invisible, standing there in the glaring headlights?”

He was met with five expressions in varying degrees of guilt. He opened his mouth to pour some ice water onto this steaming pile of whatever they were cooking up, but in the few seconds it took to give them the once over he suddenly became incredibly disinterested in whatever any of them had to say, and he turned back to the bridge. What did it matter anyway. He was simply wasting energy.

With any luck they’d pick up on this and leave him alone.

–

Sweeping mistakes of the universe #208: Don’t ever count on luck.

They had obviously dreamed up some sort of stratagem of quick draw and parry to slip past his defences. With their ringleader, unsurprisingly, being his mirror-universe nemesis, he of the well groomed school of no subtlety whatsoever... 

“Since we appear to be doing nothing of particular urgency in time and space right now, might I take the next three minutes of your day, Captain, to tick off a few boxes in some very dull and unimportant research I’m spearheading, and pose a small number of hypothetical As or Bs to you?”

“I – pose your what now?”

“Quick as you please, don’t think on them too hard, just rolling off the tongue here. Now, first: curls or waves?”

“Eh?”

“Short or tall?”

“What is this?”

“Amber or aquamarine?”

“Did that navigational loon plug you into the grav sensors again?”

“As I said, don’t get bogged down in the details, sir, just go with your instincts. Sweet or sultry?”

“Computer...”

“Cool as a Neptune’s shadow or flush with the fiery passions of Sol?”

“...Deactivate EHH.”

“Thank you, Captain, that was very hel--”

Cris smeared the cigar into the tray. He stared purposely and without focus at the lines of stitching on the armrest while it smouldered away, unwanted. 

_What in the actual...?_

–

He told himself, no, it wasn’t about her. They wouldn’t be that obvious.

Well, he was wrong again.

“Captain, there’s a way to fix this.”

Having failed to quietly push him in the right direction, they were now on a rotating shift of more or less blaring in his face intervention. Right now he had Emil staring down at him. Emil, who had been safe on La Sirena for weeks now. No more off-ship adventures playing hide and seek with the lab dwellers down below. 

“Where did you learn nuance from, a Ferengi salesman?” Cris waved him away and focused on the meal he was trying to eat. The one that tasted of cardboard. Despite his grand plan to repair things the food replicators were back on the fritz. Ian was doing his best but as he told the captain with a quiet kick of brutal honesty, they were too far out in the black, just themselves and nothing. They were wallowing, treading water where they shouldn’t. “You’re doing fine,” he said around a mouthful of something green and stodgy. “Nobody needs to fix anything.”

“Yes, _we’re_ doing fine. Us, your holograms, the windows to that unbreakable lump of a geode you call a soul. We’re as fine as can be, sir. You, however, are not.”

One look at the doctor’s face immediately deflated the spat of irritation Cris felt rising in his chest. Perhaps sensing the advantage he’d been inching towards, Emil took a breath and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Well, I’m going to take that gormless silence as permission to speak freely. We worry about you, Captain. I don’t think that’s a great secret. We want you to be happy, and I used to think if that meant your turning us off every fifteen minutes at the slightest provocation, then so be it. Your need for solitude isn’t a weakness or a great disparaging aspect to your personality. But it shouldn’t define you. Letting someone in isn’t going to mean you have to spring into life like a cactus flower in the desert.”

Cris stared. “I’m a cactus in the desert?” he repeated.

“No, you’re the flower. One of the sort that emerges every nine years to shine for a brief yet dazzling moment between the prickly spines.” Emil blinked irritably. “Look, I’m a doctor with a lot on my plate. My bank of metaphors to toss about heavy-handedly during heart to heart conversations isn’t the most polished, okay?” 

The urge to respond with a soft but sarcastic comment was strong but Cris pushed it down. He tried to focus on his food, unsuccessfully. The hologram thought some more and continued.

“When I was... swapped out... you know, my feet on the ground, in the trenches, as it were, I observed some things about Dr Jurati. She asked about you. Quite a lot, actually. All very gently, very sincerely. I did try to downplay things, sir, don’t worry. I know how you detest flattery of any sort. But the more I did this the less truthful it seemed. I thought, why play around with facades, it felt most contrary to what was really going on under the surface.”

“Which was?”

“That she likes you. As I believe you do, her.” 

Cris said nothing. He nudged the tray with one finger, then crossed his arms before he could do worse and send the whole thing spinning. He felt Emil watching him. After all this time it was the still the oddest thing to have his own facsimile deliver words in that rounded accent, with those eyes and that face that was his but wasn’t, and not immediately succumb to the urge to turn away. Sometimes, only ever with Emmet, late at ship’s night on the bridge, he relaxed and got as close to truths and fears and realities as he really thought he could, but usually that was with too much pisco sitting heavy in his stomach. Never here, his seat and thighs getting slightly numbed on the utilitarian grating of the old mess tables and benches he’d always meant to upgrade to something a little more comfortable, but had never gotten around to. He wore the same black and grey clothing every day, sat in the same chair with its green-grey upholstery practically moulded to the shape of his back, steered his ship up and along the same routes in order to come out on top and have enough pocket to keep his world running, this small world, and his holograms in it. That was all he wanted and all he really aimed for.

Except, he thought, she had mentioned her father. In a joke aside she had told him of her father, and now he wanted to tell her that he understood, that his old man was gone as well and that wasn’t a great thing, that was a thing he didn’t like to speak of, but he understood. He didn’t _need_ to. He didn’t need her sat there in the other half of the bench seat, sharing bad replicator meals and knocking elbows, asking the story behind his holograms’ names.

But he would like to try, he realised. If she would, too. 

Of course, he didn’t say any of this. He only watched as the EMH mused slightly, eyes straying at the tale he seemed to be weaving in his head. “Though perhaps Dr Jurati is fond of desert blooms. Even the solitary ones have some charm...”

“Yeah, okay, you can piss off now.”

A heavy sigh, followed by footsteps retreating to the med-lab. He held back until Emil was almost gone, then, “It’s one,” said Cris.

“I’m sorry, Captain?”

“It’s not nine years, your flower. Just one.”

“Years can lose meaning when you stop counting them,” said Emil, from the door. “I think the label holds.”


	3. the hardest question is the one you ask before the fall

He gave himself several days for the feeling to disappear, or to at least morph into something familiar that he could then set as his life’s work in trying to ignore. But when it didn’t, and things got to the point where the Daystrom logo was near to burning a hole in his console, Cris Rios turned his freighter around, listened for light snoring to drift from the tactical station and Emmet’s head to fall gently to one side, and there in the well of his thoughts he pushed her comm link into the empty queue, and waited. 

Like most things in life, he had found a way to render a mask of not caring into a new line of regret that gnawed inside and grew until he couldn’t see past it, and like most things the way through was just to speak. 

The problem was this wasn’t pointing fingers and playing favourites with holograms, wondering if some security branch was going to clamp him for unauthorised comm traffic. Conflict he could run ball with, easy. 

In Starfleet he’d made a career of being there for other people. Heavy cruisers were not the showy prizes of the fleet, but they still took some wrangling, a whole mess of people and problems changing out on a daily basis, and Cris had been good at it. 

Until the rest. 

After, people became the hindrance. During his first night on board alone, partially inebriated and playing around with settings he’d later claim he’d at least _started_ completing while sober, he kicked a bottle across the empty, shining deck and swore at the computer to finish it. Let it fall however, whatever, he didn’t care. But when he woke to his own face, a plummy accented voice that seemed to come from a far away place, suggesting in calm tones that he take a glass of water, Cris at last saw the situation he was in for what it really was, and just how far he would have to climb to get out again.

And Agnes Jurati, who he had known for all of how long? She didn’t deserve to see that.

(Here, again, he heard Emil – _But how do you know that, sir?_

_I don’t._

_Then stop projecting. Onto her, onto yourself. And, irony aside, onto us._ )

“I can’t,” said Cris aloud, to no-one. 

What did it matter, he tried to reason, slumping as far as was physically possible in the chair while still managing to keep a more or less upright veneer of captaincy. She was probably going to-- 

It was hopeless. He couldn’t even self-flagellate an imagined rejection. 

Cris raked a hand through his hair. That made his scalp itch so he took out his lighter instead and tapped it against the armrest. He put it away again when Emmet threatened to wake. A noise from the engines made him turn and stare blindly into the pattern of lights before he decided it was nothing and--

Then, a soft chiming on the imager, a light blinking green, and the log trailing under a static rendering of her face: _Call-ID#443.9-Jurati, A. Open/Decline?_

Eight and a half seconds to make a decision – not that he was being dramatic about it – and Cris hit the screen.

“Hi--” 

“--Hello.”

This scintillating opening was followed by a silence so long and so desperate that whole planets were carved out in its yawing awkwardness. It took a sleepy grunt from the chair at the forward console to set time running again. 

Agnes, who he was beginning to suspect shared some of his flare for overthinking, made a show of looking about curiously. “Hmm. I see no unexpected guests here in my lab,” she said. “No hologram with your face politely demanding to be returned to space.”

“That’s true.”

She waited. For a second she looked like her staff headshot, a sweet face with patient eyes, before something caught at the edge of her lips, like the tail-end of a joke she wanted to share, warmth bubbling into a tease. “Then what?” she asked.

“I’ve ran out of excuses,” he said, sitting up. “I didn’t break anything, haven’t lost anyone. I waited until my guy here fell asleep because I didn’t want a projection of myself watching me or _hearing_ me trying to string three words together to call you.” 

Cris paused, saw Emmet rousing, and expelled the rest of his extremely unprepared speech in a rush.

“Look, I got space to rent and everywhere to be, the replicators are clapping out and my engineer predicts dire doom if we don’t see the inside of a repair station in the next five minutes, but I’d like to see you again. I’d like to... do you want to share a bad meal with me, Agnes?” 

“Yes, Cris. I want to share a bad meal with you.” 

She didn’t hesitate. 

“Well, okay,” he said.

–

She sent her schedule through, with a note. _Whenever suits! Fix your ship first, if you need to. I’ll be here._

He sent a reply back almost immediately but even so, not two minutes later he found Steward diligently incorporating dates and activities into Cris’s own calendar and pretty much planning an imaginary future for them well into the new stellar year. The fact that Cris didn’t wrench the hologram’s folio out of his hands and render it into permanent invisibility had him really wondering if he was quite himself anymore. 

To a point. 

“These are of course merely suggestions, sir. And if I may, a gentle guide for you to avoid the pitfalls of the past when it comes to matters of a more intimate... now really, what in the good galaxy is that expression for?”

“It’s me imagining the joyful day when you leave me alone for ten seconds, that you never say that word again as long as I’m breathing, and you let me make those mistakes myself.” 

“And you do them so well, Captain.” There Steward fizzled away with a wink. 

He made the holograms swear an oath that they would obey the do not disturb, please, for all it’s god-damned worth sign and would discreetly fuck-off for the night. It was fairly pointless, and Cris knew for a fact that reports would be whispered into the gossipy ether come the next day even if he cut ribbons through their source code, so he simply waved them to the ship’s far corners and holed up in his quarters to chew on his own thoughts while he waited for 19:00 to tick around. 

There were meal choices and appearance choices and did he really want to look like he’d rolled out of bed choices he could have wasted time over, but in the end he accepted the first nutritious suggestion that the EHH had pre-programmed and left it at that. Maybe the opinionated door-greeter was good for some things. And as for his clothes, well, he just changed his shirt for a fresh but identical one because he hadn’t really said it was a _date_ date, or a dinner, or an evening, _not really_. 

He was trying very hard to make this be a thing that didn’t matter.

A good decision that was, too, when Agnes arrived in close to the same outfit she’d worn when he’d first met her, Dr Jurati the scientist, dressed as plainly as her holo.

–

“Look at it. Couldn’t you just... sit here all day.” 

Agnes leant back in the captain’s chair. Her hands were wrapped around a mug of cooling tea.

“I do sit here all day,” said Cris, from the tactical station. “Trust me, fourteen hours in the backwaters with zip and nil to look at can get pretty dull pretty fast.”

“Oh, I believe you. I fully expect a week here and I’d be wearing a tee shirt that says ‘space is actually what is says on the tin’. It’s just right now, it’s all new and shiny for me.”

“Didn’t you say this was a dream project?”

Agnes chuckled, very slightly. “That I did.”

The meal was over, and now he was thinking they’d somehow entered a netherworld or subspace dimension, because she still hadn’t expressed a need to leave, and he hadn’t offered one. He felt okay, though, sitting there as she pressed her cheek against the mermaid insignia on the headrest and told him about dull meetings and wet-handed tussles in academia that would rival even his longest hauls out here. His book lay on the forward console, forgotten; it was that time of ship’s night when the lighting in the wall recesses flickered down and Cris would normally let a cigar run through as he lost himself in long sentences until his eyes grew heavy. This was different; and he liked it.

Agnes caught his eyes and cradled the mug, the pad of her thumb tracing the smooth ceramic. “Tell me about La Sirena,” she said, changing topic.

He tried not to smile. That was happening a lot lately. _“Sirena,”_ he repeated slowly, pulling the letter across his tongue.

She huffed and attempted the trill again. It was almost too distracting but he didn’t want to push things, so he gave a small thumbs up and was rewarded with a look he probably deserved. 

Cris glanced outside. If he angled his head he was able to catch sight of a very faint haze in dusk-like orange, floating distantly against the stars. To his tired eyes it seemed almost to melt into the inky black. Enoch, who had an extensive database on every odd wisp and flurry out there, might have happily prattled on about its delightful nebula-ness for several long minutes had he been at the bridge, probably until Cris either talked over him threatening a unilateral shut down, or gave up and wandered off, leaving those irritating vowels to sing to an empty bridge. 

He had a feeling Agnes would be one to stay.

“First time I took her out, the plating on one of the nacelles threatened to shear,” he said. “That _viejo_ trashbeater I’d brought her from had done a botch job with the upgrades, and I think I saw maybe two minutes of space on my own before I had to watch her sit in a repair sloop for a month. I thought I knew how to fly but I was like an ensign again, sat green in that chair right there, too big for my scrawny ass. You find out how sharp learning curves are and how hard they bite, when you go at it alone.”

Her lips drew into a small smile. He was used to this story rolling around in his head, unshared, and continued before the need to turn the topic away from himself reappeared. “Her name was a string of alpha numeric codes in standard, so I named her for a fortune and a song I guess I was chasing at the time.”

“That’s beautiful.”

Cris made a noise in the back of his throat. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “It’s also a load of horseshit when you say it out loud.”

“No, really.” Agnes sat up. Static lifted her hair on one side and she caught the flicker of his eyes, frowned in confusion, and patted it down. “You’re gonna think me all sorts of naive here, but I think that’s how most things are for people. So personal it’s hard to put into words and when you do they sound either pretentious to all heck or like, um...” 

“Like what?”

“Love?”

 _Well, snap_ , he thought. Cris shrugged, trying to keep things light, though something shifted in his chest. “Yeah, you got me there,” he said.

They fell silent. Agnes swung one of her feet then stopped with a rubbery squeak on the flooring and said, “Well, I should... probably go now.”

Cris pulled his legs back from where they had been angled spider-like and stood up, nudging the chair with one hip in the vague direction of the forward console. He was distantly observing how this date, or whatever they were labelling this, wasn’t exactly following the usual path of scrambling to fill silences intercut with bad flirting through a veil of legal intoxicants. Instead he’d replicated tea, the sort he never drank because it tasted of old dried flowers, and left the aguardiente out of reach. Talking to her was easy. In anyone else those odd turns of phrase and all-directions chatter might have rubbed the wrong way, but there was something about the clear-eyed way she expressed hers that was different. He supposed getting older and having no expectations made it easier. 

Emil, doctor-knows-all, was right. And would hopefully never learn of the concession his captain just made.

“Sure, of course, I don’t want you falling asleep in front of your students,” he said. 

“Student,” she corrected. “Singular. I had five at the start of the year. All but one lost to greener pastures since, or should I say, specialities with better career prospects and less stifling restrictions.” Agnes sighed and got up as well, reaching over to put her mug down by his book. She angled her torso into a micro-stretch and shivered. “Oh god, I’m a whole body,” she muttered under her breath. At his expression she wrinkled her nose, adding, “I mean, aches and pains and muscles full of knots. Don’t you ever get really conscious of yourself, what you’re made of? The bareness of your physicality? It’s like that. I’m a whole body.”

“That’s... maybe the oddest thing I’ve heard,” said Cris.

Agnes laughed quickly. “Full disclosure, then. I’ve a lot more where that came from. But I think you’re going to learn that.”

This came almost too softly, and she stared at him for a second or two while the meaning was left floating between them, her eyes unblinking past a flat tangle of hair that had come untucked from behind one ear. Then she turned and began to make her way to the transporter pad. 

Halfway there she slowed, waiting until he caught up. One of her hands fell back and her fingers brushed his before she pulled away again. 

He realised what was happening when instead of standing up to the wide honeycomb plating she paused on the small in-between step and turned around. 

“Agnes.” 

He was using her name as test to himself, really; he had no idea what the next words should be. But it didn’t matter, she didn’t hear him. Her toes were balanced over the edge when she spoke, a fast and low murmur as if channelling a message to herself with a downward flick of her eyes. “So, I think we should...”

She never finished. The last was barely out when she wrapped her hands to his face and pulled him to her. It was awkward, stop-start, her mouth opening against his as he planted his feet and wound his arms around her back, and he was very nearly caught off balance, locked in a dual attempt to both match her movements and stop her from falling, his fingers pressed into the cotton of her shirt. Then, quite all at once and without much thought altogether, he forgot about the practicalities and became lost to the feeling of cool, curious fingers curled into his hair, of lips that were soft and warm, while a rush of something deep and electric shook itself awake in his chest, and-- 

Agnes broke away. Her eyes were shining. She seemed all at once shaken and alive and struck by her own bravery. With her weight against him still, and his hands clasped around her waist, she took in a breath and stepped down so they were both standing on the floor. 

Cris drew back, just the tiniest distance to hold her gaze. 

Then he dipped his head and kissed her back, properly. 

This shift in acceleration, plus the return to a more even footing, had the added bonus of bringing the temperature down a notch, and there he noticed a few things. Like the way her hands fell hesitantly but firmly to his chest. Two or three faint lines creasing her forehead, as if a more measured thought perhaps lost in the heat of the moment had made its return, to be pondered over now, and gently. The taste of tea on her lips. All of it good. His brain had no further descriptors or flowing overtures. Maybe they didn’t matter.

“Um. I kind of interrupted you there. You were saying we should do something?” he asked, voice more than a little rough.

A flush crept across her cheeks. “That? Only kind of in... words.” 

Cris thought of the EMH, to another tired metaphor he cold be applying to the situation right now. He then thought better of it and gave a tiny shrug. They parted, Agnes stepping reluctantly to the centre of the pad while he tapped in the co-ordinates and watched through the shifting light as her smile broke. It was that smile, and the one he gave back, which surprised him the most. More than the others; he’d convinced himself of it being gone a long time ago, when he supposed, like most things, like the rest, it had been there in the world all along. 

–

It began with a fault in the system. It continued with another. 

Except when one month strayed into two, and then three, when the transporter route between Dr Jurati’s lab and La Sirena was being used so repeatedly it began to clog up the local relay hubs, to those on board it became not so much a fault as an opportunity.

The study of holograms – offshore, off-book, and more than a little on the fly – was perhaps too broad in scope to be classified as part of an official research stream. But it had many volunteers and at least one independent expert ready to do the hard work. And they were, on the whole, undemanding subjects. 

Which made the fact that nobody had yet to come up with an answer to one simple question even more frustrating: namely, how in the cosmos did these unremarkable partitions of coding, with their regulated subroutines and bland, default presets, managed so consistently to create drama out of _everything_.

“What a bloody state this is. I think you need to turn in this direction – no, that’s all wrong, my left hand has disappeared. No, now my right foot’s gone...”

“Well, this is a new one for the logbooks. You’re going to make poor Emil blush to the ends of his whiskers, lassie, if you keep this up.”

“Steward, should I nip upstairs and get Dr Jurati? These two really don’t seem to be getting anywhere here.”

“Oh, there’s no need to disturb the lovebirds, Enoch, we’re perfectly capable of sorting this out. Now, team, let’s think calmly and logically. We’ve been in this situation before. Remember those tribbles in heat?”

“I am _not_ a randy tribble!”

“Indeed, but I dare say it’s a similar logistical puzzle. Anyway, I’m sure we can separate the pair of you if we gnash our heads together. Perhaps if you were to face Emil, my dear, like this, and then Emil can--?”

“No, Steward!”

“You have lovely eyes, Doctor.”

“Have I? Well, that’s very kind... and so do you, Doctor, if we’re being absolutely honest here, but is this really the time – hey! Whose hand is that?”

 _“Gentilmente, hermano.”_

“Emmet, please, not you too...”

The argument carried distantly to the bridge. There the auto-pilot beeped softly and holo-screens flashed as the ship’s computer, lacking the sentience to hold any real concern for what was going on, cycled through its array of tasks. Cris, being very much the opposite of this and wishing not for the first time that he could exist just as the computer in blissful ignorance, had been staring out of the port side window while the rumblings of this latest low-stakes disaster played out beneath his feet. Eventually he gave up and wandered back to where Agnes was leaning against the railing, her eyes bright with fascination.

“How the actual heck did that happen?” she asked, watching as four dark heads formed a helpful but confused huddle around an increasingly flustered Emil and the sweetly smiling Jurati hologram, who in today’s exciting misadventure had managed to become partially fused with one another and were now trying to pull themselves apart, like two dancing beetles. Unsurprisingly, this talking in increasingly panicky tones over the top of one another approach to problem solving was not yielding them much success. “I leave them for half an hour and... they do like getting in a twist, that lot, don’t they? I should probably go help.” 

He sighed. “I really hope this isn’t what you meant about developing integrated personalities.” 

Cris wondered if he’d ever seen anything quite like the look she gave him just then, and subsequently if he really was an idiot tripping over a step he couldn’t see or that he just didn’t care about falling any more. He also wondered if any of it mattered. They reached the top of the stairs and there, angled out of sight, he tried in one awkward and unsubtle move to catch her before their world became all holograms again. 

Agnes, though, was faster, and she turned against him and laughed softly as his lips missed their mark. 

“Captain, you have no idea,” she said.

She let him hold still to her, in a moment that felt like years, before descending to the chaos below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from _selenicereus_ , the moonlight cactus.


End file.
